Reboot fever spreads to music as Weezer rides a 35-year-old Toto hit

The surprise hit of summer 2018 is a song from the 1980s resurrected by a band from the 1990s.

“Africa,” a soft-rock number with a rippling groove and lyrics that are earnest (“It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you”) and inscrutable (“I bless the rains down in Africa”) was a relic from 1983, the year it hit No. 1 for the group Toto. Fast-forward to a fan’s social-media campaign, urging the alternative-rock band Weezer to record a new version.